Cool off at Sophie's Italian Ice

3:01 PM,
Aug. 20, 2013

Anna Huck, manager of Sophie's Italian Ice, removes a batch of Italian ice from the machine.

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Article and photos by Val Horvath Davidson

Every day begins the same for Anna Huck. Mouth-watering homemade gelato doesn't make itself, a fact that is readily clear to Sophie's Italian Ice manager. The new frozen dessert joint on Benton Road is amassing quite a following, and Huck's hand-mixed treats are in such high demand that she spends every morning hunched over a stainless-steel counter preparing more.

There is no room for error in the nearly 1½-hour gelato-making process, which involves heating mixtures to precisely the right temperatures at precisely the right times. Huck is a stickler for quality, and not all of her ...